Storytellers | May 2018

JOHN MCCAULEYArt & Photography Director, New Mexico Magazine
Born and raised in New England, John McCauley moved from Boston to Santa Fe in 2006 to become an art director at Outside magazine. He thought he’d stay in New Mexico only a few years, then head back East. More than a decade later, Santa Fe is his home, and New Mexico Magazine is his newest gig. “What attracted me to the Southwest was the wide-open space, the history, and the rich culture,” he says. McCauley relishes the chance to get into nature, hunting, fishing, exploring old ruins, and rambling through national forests with his wife and their 15-month-old junior ranger. When he’s not hooking cutthroats or hitting the trail, you just might find him scouring thrift stores in search of a Billy the Kid tintype.

JENNIFER C. OLSONWhere Angels Tread
When she hikes or bikes the Continental Divide Trail, Jennifer C. Olson loves the idea that she’s sharing it with hundreds of people in other states. “It’s like looking up at the night sky and knowing that people far away are seeing the same constellations,” she says. Olson grew up in southwestern New Mexico and spent weekends, summers, and afternoons running on the same trail she now tackles with her husband and their dog from their Silver City base. A shuttle driver known as Juan More Time schooled her in the logistics required to tackle the entire trail—and the importance of kind souls who help hikers on the way.

JAY HEMPHILL
Cover / Where Angels Tread / Catron County Ramble / Prairie People
He grew up in Kansas, but Jay Hemphill fell in love with New Mexico on childhood ski trips to Taos. At 12, he vowed to someday make the state his home. He followed through by enrolling at Western New Mexico University, in Silver City. Although Hemphill went there on a tennis scholarship, he left with a degree in photography—and an abiding affection for Silver City, where he still lives. “The Harding County story, ‘Prairie People,’ is my all-time favorite one I’ve shot for New Mexico Magazine,” he says—and given how many photos he took for this issue, that’s saying something. “I love the wide-open grasslands, the silence, and the abandoned homesteads that dot the landscape. They have stories and energies to them. It was fascinating to photograph.”